Are Traditional Classrooms Becoming Obsolete?

What exactly is an electronic classroom? Very generally, they are new learning spaces designed to allow educators to utilize new interactive technology to improve education of all kinds. Is the mere presence and occasional usage of a piece of electronic equipment in a particular classroom justification for calling it an "electronic classroom?" What does it mean if we do use the name? What do we expect from it? The term "electronic classroom" is extremely broad, yet it is used all over the World -Wide-Web, for example. When I first began my research and used a search engine to look up electronic classrooms, I found hundreds, probably thousands of entries. Then I discovered how different all of the entries are. Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe explains this well in the introduction to her bibliography of sources on electronic classrooms, "Electronic classrooms are also called computer classrooms, media-equipped classrooms, media laboratories, etc., and all of these names can refer to any number of classroom configurations." (1) Sometimes an electronic classroom is not a physical classroom at all. The only pieces of physical evidence that such a classroom exists are the files on a web server. These classes are conducted entirely over the web, a computerized correspondence course. Often an electronic classroom does consist of an actual room in which students and faculty use technology for teaching and learning.

When I initially envisioned an electronic classroom, I thought of a typical classroom with rows, or even clusters of desks and chairs with a teacher at the front, monitoring or lecturing. The difference is that on each student's desk, there is a computer, not a book and instead of a blackboard, a projector screen to be used with a digital projector that takes information from the instructor's computer. This image is correct but it is only one kind of electronic classroom. There can be hundreds of variations. What kinds of computers are they? Does every student have a computer, or just the instructor? Are they connected to the internet? Do the students use the Word-Wide Web? Is video used during class also?

One of the most telling examples of the varied applications of the term "electronic classroom" can be taken from an experience of mine while working on this article. I knew I would not be able to get to a computer again for a significant period of time, so I printed out some of the web pages that I had planned to use as examples. Three of them were titled almost identically, Two called "The Electronic Classroom" and the third was just "Electronic Classroom". The first is a note from a professor to his students explaining that the bulk of their class work would involve using computers. He begins by saying ,
My goal for this class is that we can do as much online as possible. I really want to get away from printed material and paper usage. I'm hoping to create a model, using the services on the campus network, by which other classes can be based.(2)

He intends to have them use web browsers and newsgroups to supplement their assignments, and also to have a space where he can leave assignments and other information that is easily accessible. "...for the most part, you will be able to do most of your studying online."(3) This happens to be a computer science class, so none of this is particularly surprising. Presumably there is some sort of computer lab for the students to use, but the professor does not mention an actual classroom.

Duke University piloted a "paperless classroom" in 1994. The students were given networked laptops so that they could interact electronically outside of the classroom as well as during class sessions. This electronic teaching literally replaces the paper notebook with a notebook-sized computer. The students use the screen's desktop rather than the flat top of the desk. It is rather like my initial vision of an electronic classroom, with one notable exception. This classroom is practically portable. The laptops were equipped with software that allowed for wireless networking that was independent of the physical classroom.(4)

Here at Wesleyan University, the term "electronic classroom" is not very widespread, yet educational technology is rapidly advancing. We now have five regional computer laboratories, each designed to cater to certain groups of departments, but all provide basic word-processing and electronic mail services for students. All of these labs are primarily public labs for students to use to prepare their work. For example, the new W. M. Keck Humanities Computer Lab that just opened this spring is designed for students taking classes in departments that fall under the category of humanities.


Students using this lab can read and write documents in many foreign languages, including Japanese and Greek, as well as the Romance languages. The computers in the Science Tower Lab have special software installed so that students can make graphs and manipulate mathematical equations, for a math or physics course. Occasionally, all or half of these labs are reserved for class meetings, but they are not considered classrooms. They are workspaces designed for students to supplement class work. We do have one computer area that is specifically referred to as the electronic classroom. It is part of a project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation designed to help teach both professors and students to learn and teach foreign languages using computers and the internet. This particular room is not open to students who simply want to get some work done. Only specific classes directly supervised by an instructor can use this particular facility.

Sometimes the difference between a classroom and a lab is only evident in rules such as these made by the institutions or stipulated by grant requirements. It is clear from the pictures that the Keck computer lab and the Mellon EC rooms are almost identically set up in reference to the placement of the machines. They are not set up in a common classroom formation. Students in from of the machines, facing the side walls. A digital projector and screen can be set up on one end of the room or the other, but in order to view it, the students must turn away from their own computer desktops. These spaces seem to be designed to double as both labs and classrooms, changing formation from a group of people focused on a screen or a lecturer, to a group of individual computer users through the much older technological advance, called the swivel chair.

These different kinds of educational spaces that allow the use of new interactive technologies opened up the possibility of the development of a wider range of learning and teaching styles. In 1994, G. Phillip Cartwright published an article titled, Distance Learning A Different Time, a Different Place. He made an important distinction between synchronous and asynchronous learning. Synchronous learning refers to students and teachers learning and teaching at the same time, such as in a traditional classroom at a specified time, or perhaps using some sort of interactive technology similar to video-conferencing. Either way, their interaction with each other and the course material happens at the same time. Asynchronous learning refers to learning and teaching that take place at different times and often in different places.(5)

Synchronous electronic learning has at least two basic forms, the physical classroom and the class contained only in the files that the students and instructors can access over the internet. A physical electronic classroom resembles my initial vision of the electronic classroom. Some times they even have innovative furniture, such as desks in the previously mentioned math classroom at Tulane that fit two students and have the monitor underneath the desk, visible through a glass desktop in order to have a writing surface as well as a computer screen. The second kind of synchronous learning involves students in separate physical locations to use interactive tools such as email computer bulletin boards or chat lines, simultaneously. They can have discussions through the text on the screen.

As soon as we move to an internet or network- based form of interaction, it is very easy to make the jump to asynchronous learning. Why do students need to be working at the same time when they are sending text messages back and forth? Those messages can remain in the files to be read later, day or night at both the students' and the instructor(s) convenience. Improved computer networking capabilities and especially the internet have been indispensible in promoting quality distance learning.

The notions of synchronous and asynchronous learning are not new at all, but computer advances have created more options, especially for asynchronous learning. While contact through interactive technology is no substitute for human interaction for the purpose of education, it comes much closer and happens a lot faster than its predecessor, the mail correspondence course. The World -Wide Web has allowed for visually pleasing and easily accessible information to be available to anyone who can get to a computer. It looks like the perfect vehicle to display information needed for a large class, such as syllabi, assignments or general announcements. Email can be used to communicate individually between both students and instructors. Electronic bulletin boards can be used to facilitate online discussions that can go on continuously, as people participate whenever they have the time.

The variety of electronic classrooms illustrates the newness and changing dynamic of much of the technology being applied to education. All of the new products and services being developed and offered promise to revitalize the learning process. As both instructors and students grow more accustomed to them, it will become easier to determine which pieces of the new technology are beneficial and which ones may be a waste of electricity.

(1)Hinchliffe, Lisa Janicke. Planning an Electronic Classroom: An Annotated Bibliography, http://alexia.lis.uiue.edu/~janicke/Abstracts.html

(2) & (3)Lieberman, Paul. The Electronic Classroom http://www.sosc.osshe.edu/cs/cis200/eclass.htm

(4)&(5)Cartwright, Philip G; Distance Learning A Different Time, A Different Place; Change", July/August 1994 pp. 30-32

Blumberg, Roger. Ex Libris; The Sciences; September/October 1995, pp. 16-19

The Electronic Classroom, West Virginia Educational Network, http://wvscen.wvsc.wvnet.edu/classrm.html

Distributed Electronic Classrooms,http://munin.uio.no/English/intro.html
Date viewed-4/30/97

CTW Mellon Project for Language Learning and Technology, http://www.wesleyan.edu/CTWMellon/ec/ecwes
last updated 4/3/97